It's a wet one!

Aug 13 18:12 UTC 1995

Earth: X-86A602-3 (Water world)  (Formerly C-867976-8)

    Okay, so it wasn't really Oscar material. But this is one of the things
that interest me in movies; it only cost me $3 instead of the customary $7;
I was curious how things would be portrayed; and the idea of New York cab
drivers having to take a bath was too good to resist.

    Unfortunately, I missed the first 5 minutes or so; I got in at the part
where the guy with the gills had come up from a dive and was throwing a bag
of dirt aboard his ship.

    However, some notes, questions, and observations:


* In order for Denver to be under water, New York and Los Angeles have to be
  5000 feet deep. In order for most of the mountains to be under water, just
  about all of the previously civilized world has to be *many* thousands of
  feet deep - out of reach of most military submarines, let alone divers. No
  wonder dirt is so valuable!

* Large oceans of water are well known for producing big storms. There should
  have been at least one good hurricane in this movie.

* Whatever happened, there was plenty of time for National Geographic to
  publish a story called "Paridise Lost" - presumably about the swamping of
  Hawaii - and expect people to have time to read it. Yet there is a hint of
  nuclear exchange in the ostracism of "mutations!"

* This is a little like the Noah's Ark story but with plenty of watercraft
  already available. Would there be enough watercraft to carry everybody?
  Probably not - most of the people would still end up going blub-blub-blub.
  But there *are* thousands of freighters, fishing boats, passenger liners,
  oil tankers, not to mention military ships including aircraft carriers.
  Aircraft carriers and modern subs are cities unto themselves. It should be
  possible for at least a couple of these to still be functioning during the
  time period of the movie.

* Was that a submarine with its nose stuck in the bottom at a 45 degree angle?
  (The scene where Aqualung takes the woman down in the diving bell to show
  her not-so-dry land.)

* Can a sailing ship perform that well? My family's next door neighbor had a
  sailing vessel many years ago; it was impossible to get the thing to go
  faster than a few miles per hour, no matter what the wind. Of course, a
  trimaran design would help, by keeping the wind from rolling the ship over;
  and sail-driven land and ice vehicles are reputed to be reasonably fast.
  But outrunning jet-skis is stretching it a little.

* There are a few problems with the diving bell. There was a guage which
  displayed numbers in the hundreds; but this could have been meters or fathoms
  as well as feet, supposing it even read correctly. And as stated previously,
  most of the bottom has to be thousands of feet down. Each 30 feet down is
  an atmosphere of pressure. (Another visual cue to depth is the high voltage
  electric line towers.) The bell was open at the bottom, so the pressure
  would equalize and not crush it, whether fresh air was being pumped in
  from the surface or not. However, the occupant would be breathing elevated
  concentrations of oxygen and nitrogen, and in any event would have to come
  back up a lot more slowly.

* So *that's* why there were so many holes in the _Exxon Valdis's_ freeboard.
  (to stick oars through).

* The first and most likely dry land would be the Himmalayahs. The most
  effective srategy for finding it would be to sail to the latitude of
  Everest, then head either due east or due west; and if it's sticking out
  of the water, the height of the highest point, combined with a topographic
  map of Earth, should point out the locations of other pieces of dry land.

* Dry Land should be inhabited by the time our heros get to it. Wouldn't
  people be evacuated to it as the water is rising?

* How does everybody know where they are? Latitude is easy. But Greenwich is
  thousands of feet under the waves, and everything else moves around.

* Where did the water come from? There isn't enough in the polar caps to cover
  everything. (Melting the north polar cap won't raise the oceans an inch -
  that chunk of ice is floating, and is displacing all the sea water that it
  ever will.)

response 2 of 10:

Aug 15 04:54 UTC 1995

   Sometimes its interesting to note what is wrong with a picture.  Perhaps
someone other than me will take on exactly what is wrong with Asimov's view of
Robots, and the amazing lack of programmers around them...

response 4 of 10:

Aug 16 17:12 UTC 1995

  This was exactly what was wrong with VR5, except for bad acting.

response 6 of 10:

Sep 13 18:36 UTC 1995

Oh no.  She was the worst actor in VR%, and much too forced.  Like Lost in
Space, I couldn't stand to wacth an episode of this awful show.

response 8 of 10:

Sep 15 03:41 UTC 1995

   I suppose you're right, but I couldn't stand looking at her while she was in
the show..., now maybe if it was a picture without her trying to act...

response 10 of 10:

Nov 5 15:40 UTC 1995

I particularly liked the attack water skiers.